Hungarian Elections 2006

Attacks on politicians

Hungarian elections always produce strange phenomena. The most interesting of these is when voters express their opinion in a strange and uncivilized manner. Lately, there have been two examples of this.

First, in the beginning of February, a few activists of Green Party, a group from the radical right, have tried to disturb the campaign speech of Gábor Demszky, mayor of Budapest, by throwing a cake at him. It is easy to discover how this attack is reminiscent of that committed against Bill Gates a few years ago, and it may not be coincidence. The attackers were a group of friends brought together by the Internet and led by the "famous" blogger and shirt maker, Tomcat. While the Hungarian media tried to make as much of a scandal out of the case as they could, by interviewing Tomcat, the Internet community reacted in a much more civilized manner. In the following days many bloggers stated that democracy does not mean that people like the self-styled terrorist are free to throw cakes at politicians if they do not like them. In democracy, the civilized way to express one's opinion would be voting, at least for those who are mature enough to do so.

The second incident occurred last week, when other Green Party activists tried to attack the open forum of Zoltán Pokorni, a FIDESZ politician, in Püspökladány. The group, wearing masks, was armed with pillows, which they intended to throw to disturb the speech, simbolizing that they have had enough of politics, and politicians should go to sleep. Security guards prevented the attack and removed the radicals from the building. Later on, the police arrested some members of the group, and stated that the age of the members ranged between 14 and 30 years. A FIDESZ speaker commented that this event was a clear attack against democracy.

Two months have passed of the election campaign in Hungary, and there is one more to go until the vote on 9 April 2006. Chances are that many more entertaining events like these will happen, having very little or no effect on the outcome of the elections, but making the war-torn victims of the campaign, or, as some like to call them, the voters, smile.